Air France stops using Twitter to serve passengers – 03/05/2023 – Tech

Air France said on Friday it would no longer offer customer service via direct message on Twitter, becoming the latest high-profile company to abandon at least part of its presence on the platform.

A change in the terms and conditions of the platform was the reason for the decision, informed the Parisian company in a publication on the social network itself: “Since Twitter has changed its conditions, our direct message service on this network is unavailable. Our service teams remain available at our other channels. Thank you for your understanding.”

According to the website Paddle Your Own Kanoo (PYOK), Air France is far from the only one to cut some ties with Elon Musk’s Twitter in recent times, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York said, in the earlier that same week, that it would no longer post service alerts and information on the site. This MTA decision would have arisen from Twitter’s new charges for posting automatic updates on the social network.

Organizations like the MTA used to connect to Twitter and post automated updates through an application programming interface, but the company has recently started charging for that service. Some reports suggest that the site wanted the MTA to shell out $50,000 a month to publish its automated service alerts.

Late last year, United Airlines joined a growing list of major corporations that pulled Twitter advertising after the Musk acquisition. United declined to provide a reason to “temporarily” suspend advertising on Twitter.

Musk reportedly wants big brands and companies to pay $1,000 a month for a ‘gold’ checkmark that replaced the blue checkmark system. Currently, Air France does not have any verification marks, which could indicate that the airline is not paying Twitter to be verified.